Butte County beware: It's fire season in January

A fire burned between 15 and 25 acres of dry vegetation off Spyglass Road and Hicks Lane on June 28, 2012. Cal Fire-Butte County and Chico fire crews were able to stop the spread of flames before they got too close to homes near Hicks Lane and Guntern Road. The fire reportedly started from a machine striking rocks while cutting dry weeds to create a fire break. The current drought is causing a lot of concerns about fire danger.(Bill Husa/Staff File Photo)

Burn season has been indefinitely suspended in Butte County, until the unseasonable drought ends.

Cal Fire-Butte County Battalion Chief Chris Haile said the drought has caused a lot of concern, and has made it as if the fire season hasn't really ended.

"We have had no rain and what little rain we've had has immediately soaked into the ground," he said. "We are having fires virtually every day and this time of the year that is not something we normally do. We have structure fires, sure, but now we are having vegetation fires, and it is very difficult for us right now."

The lack of rainfall has made it a fire hazard for residents to go about normal winter behavior, such as dumping their wood stove ashes, which Haile said needs to be discarded of in a steel container and soaked with water.

"A lot of our vegetation fires are starting from people discarding their fire ashes," he said. "There has been about one fire a week that has been cause by just that."

In Haile's 27 years with Cal Fire, he has yet to see a fire danger this bad in January. He had heard of stories from 1976 when California experienced a similar drought, but he was a freshman in high school at that time.

"The calendar says January, but the conditions and the fuel says August," Haile said. "I have never seen this and it is truly eye opening. It is more than concerning; it is dangerous. I shudder to think what it is going to look like this summer."

Cal Fire recently had to tend to a vegetation fire that started underground after a Magalia resident started a burn pile.

"The man started a fire on Saturday, stayed with the fire and the fire was out, and by Monday the fire had popped up and it had gotten in the root systems of a tree, gone another 30, 40 feet underground and popped up and started burning and got another portion of his property on fire," Haile said.

Despite a resident's best intentions, Haile said that a resident can do everything seemingly right and still be legally responsible for starting a fire.

"It is so dry, the subterranean fires are going, and that is why we suspended burning; it is just too dry," he said.

To tend to the extra fires, Cal Fire has staffed some of its seasonal employees, as well as keeping its air attack base in Chico open.

"All of our aircraft is normally going through maintenance," he said. "The base may not close this year."

"If we are doing this now, what is it going to look like when it is 90 degrees and we haven't had any rain?" Haile said.